My kid brother, years ago, used a Military Surplus Rocket Launcher Tube (107mm-ish diameter) to hold his fishing tackle, when drowning worms at Yeadon Tarn, West Yorkshire. On the way home he foolishly wandered through Leeds-Bradford airport grounds, with the green plastic tube across his shoulders.

I censor what happened next, but there were lots of them and it hurt! eventually the Airport resumed take-offs and landings and my bro' doesn't fish with used ordnance anymore

Even if our coppers were getting a suitable budget to be able to completely secure our airports and approaches, they would still want public help. Most Police info comes from the public after all.

Mind you, I do remember as a student seeing Neighbourhood Watch signs in Kingston-upon-Thames modified to read "We'll beat students together"! I expect most "anoraks" in this scheme will be looking for brown-skinned, bearded, dishdash wearers, and that will not stop sophisticated terrorists. But it may stop the odd amateur jihadi such as the two women in Dallas seen doing their Akbahr Mitty reccie of Love Field airport: (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-standoff_17met.ART.State.Edition1.76e4a1.html)

"chilling attack" I dunno when beavis and butthead-eque terrorist wannabees set themselves on fire whilst trying to set petrol on fire I just find it funny.

I mean really, even the Anarchists cookbook can give you pointers on making a bomb that works.

I'm still more scared of going down a dark underpass then some freak blowing me up, but even if I do get blown up - O well, shit happens. If a friend or family member gets blown up - again shit happens, they could get cancer, die in a car crash or any number of other things. People die all the time these security fags need to go the hell away and let people live their lives again.

In my experience all the plane spotters care about is the registration. So the only time they would notice anything unusual would be if the numbers were peeling off or the reg was obscured (Say by a fire or large oil leak).

I was doing a tour of a hangar at my local airport the other week, one of these guys didn't realise that a 1/2 scale FW190 replica wasn't the real thing. I did sarcastically tell him that this was a special plane only used by the Nazi midget flight division and he wrote that down as well :)

Yes. My joking.

This meeting has been taken out of all proportion by the media!

I'm attending the meeting, so I'll share how it came about...

For a while now, the security guards have been chasing plane spotters away from Durham Tees Valley. Since we've been doing this for years, it is obviously a bit annoying.

So one spotter arranged with the local police whereby we can register who we are, what car we drive, where we live etc.

That's all there is to it. I was under the impression I have to now become a freedom fighter against terrorism. I just want permission to pursue my hobby.

If I see someone with a rocket launcher, of course I'll notify someone.

"In my experience all the plane spotters care about is the registration"

Probably so but that means they will realise that it should belong to a Boeing 747 rather than a blazing Jeep Cherokee.

Putting coat on now .....

I reckon Most Plod have probably been quietly doing this for months if not years without the need to suddenley have a national media attention grabbing meeting about it.

The ideas sound really, a bit like acting your nosey neighbour Doris if she saw anything odd the other night when ten people were murdered.

The one thing i bet spotters have over regular folk is that they are always there, have binoculars, are able to spot others of their ilk and more importantly who isn’t. Who better to give half decent information about comings and goings of folk about an Airport? Particularly as they already have an established voyeurism and note taking ability, just consider them spam sandwich fuelled CCTV at zero cost to the Tax Payer, but that’s as far as it goes i reckon.

I imagine the casual conversations with patrolling plod to be something like this:

PLOD: Hi Bob, nice day for it,

BOB: Hello, yeah is 20:20

PLOD: Seen anything out of place recently?

BOB: Not much, well unless you mean those two the other night with the SA7 BLOCK 1 Grail Surface to Air Missile. The shoulder launched one, man portable with a 10,000 feet operational altitude. Definitely a BLOCK 1 variant though, it didn’t have the blast cone on the rear like the BLOCK 2’s.

PLOD: ……….erm……yeah……… those BLOCK 1’s are distinctive …………….. what happened with that?

BOB: Yeah two cowboys up middle of the day trying to get the an IR Seeker lock on in that heat, might as well have chucked the thing instead all the good it did them. Still i imagine they would have probably had more luck if they pointed the seeker at something hot like a plane engine rather than the ground (chuckle).

PLOD: Really? What happened?

BOB: Not much, after 20 minutes of messing about they pointed the wrong end and fired it into the ground, nearly hit his mate (chuckle) and then they went. I think they should have read the instructions or at least got a Russian translation.

PLOD: Yeah may have helped, get the reg number?

BOB: I didn’t have time to do much the GW947 from Brussels was due in and i needed that one.

PLOD: That’s ok, what did you get?

BOB: A half dozen lovely 10megea pixel photos of their car, the reg number, vehicle chassis number, the SAM’s serial number and err oh yes some of the blokes to. It’s quite good actually I didn’t have that SAMS serial number, I just need one more for the set now. I have been really quite lucky, three SAMS from the same production batch this month alone.

PLOD: Nice, Can i have a copy of them?

BOB: I just emailed them to you using my new camera its got wifi, like it?

PLOD: Errr … yeah,, shiny, thanks mate, let us know if they get another missile, feel free to ring if they figure out the right end next time. See you later Bob.

BOB: Bye

Wasn't it UK planespotters who uncovered the CIA "extraordinary rendition" program by tracking the unmarked planes?

"So one spotter arranged with the local police whereby we can register who we are, what car we drive, where we live etc."

Oh great, so now all the lunatic Jihadis have to do is nick *your* car, which they can drive right up to the airport boundary without fear of being challenged because your plate is marked as 'clean' by the police/airport authorities.

I feel safer already.

Or hell, they could just feign an interest in plane spotting and have themselves added to the list. Though somehow I suspect Durham plod will be enaging in some off the books racial profiling, so only light skinned nutters need apply.

While I personally detest the draconian restrictions being forced on the UK populace in the name of our freedom, I can't help but point out that there's no point whatsoever having a system of protection (e.g stop people hanging around airport boundaries) and then riddling it with holes.

Not that it would make much difference either way, I mean I don't know what the range of a modern shoulder launched SAM is, but I imagine it's a deal further than the airport CCTV can see, especially if it can't see through, e.g, bushes, making all efforts to prevent it's use pretty futile. But still, I am mildly offended by the stupidity of this kind of logic.

And I'll tell you why.

Because this finally puts all this bullshit fear mongering into perspective.

Look without having the kind of police state society the Americans now enjoy, without having "concerned citizens" tattle tailing on their neighbours, spying on them and reporting them to the secret police, sorry Homeland Security, the US can't get any worse in terms of handing victory to the terrorists. They've basically said we're willing to give up everything their country stands for in order to catch the odd clown setting fire to a car.

Handing the terrorist watch over to anoraks is exactly what this country needs. We don't need pixie dust biometric passports, magic terrorist catching ID cards or a DNA database that will forever haunt the population of this country. We don't need our email captured, our IM monitored or our telephone calls recorded. We don't need anything other than the security that was already in place prior to 9/11 and doing a perfectly good job. Please count the number of successful IRA plane jackings..

Does that mean there will be the occasional successful terrorist plot, as in the Underground incident last year? Yes - but if we want a decent society, one that's free of overbearing government watching our every move, the occasional tragedy is the price we have to pay.

Giving plane spotters the job of the US Dept. Homeland Security is a bang on idea - and actually they'd probably be better at it (consider Katrina for example - my guess is that a bunch of anoraks would have handled that one better than some simpleton equestrian judge).

The only shame is this is not really the case and it's more about letting plane spotters onto airport grounds than catching bad guys.

Some one has got that the wrong way around...

Proper policing and tight and tough security from professionals are no substitute for neighbourhood sticky beaks and general intolerance.

For those of you who haven't studied psychology and criminology, just ask your self: who would you rather have find you when you're pissed: the cops, or your gran?

Everyone repeat this one loud and often

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin

Spot on there, chum. I like your way of thinking.

I hope this security craze will pass, especially since I don't see any ACTUAL security in any of the proposals made since 9/11.

Seriously, if we want to be sure our airports are secure, all we need to do is ask El Al. That airline is Israel-based, and I don't remember hearing about a hijacked El Al plane since about a quarter of a century.

Yet Israel is right in enemy territory, and there is no shortage of towel-heads in the area.

They must be doing something right, and I bet it doesn't have much to do with parking distance.

Why don't we send a study group over to El Al and check what they're doing ? Why are we content with screening baby bottles and refusing kiddie scissors ?

If we're supposed to be scared of terrorism, then I want REAL security, not just impolite security personnel prone to giving your back end a finger check.

Urgh stop misquoting Benjamin Franklin. The actual quote (if it can attributed to him at all) is "Those who would give up ESSENTIAL LIBERTY to purchase a little TEMPORARY SAFETY, deserve neither LIBERTY or SAFETY". Subtle turn of words but makes a considerable difference to the meaning.

Really this is just another irritating example of media hype over terrorism. Keep your head on straight without burying it in the sand and you'll be just fine. And if not, you probably won't around to worry about it anyway...